Labour is taking aim at work visa and family reunification categories as it eyes ways to limit the flow of migrants to the country. …

Labour immigration spokesman Trevor Mallard said there would be no change to the rights of Australians to come here, or to quotas under agreements such as with Samoa or the annual refugee quota.

Instead, it would target the numbers getting work visas, which according to Statistics NZ were granted to about 30,000 last year, as well as visas in the family reunification category.

This is policy on the hoof. They’re making it up every day.

If they can’t even handle opposition, how could they handle Government?

UPDATE: Cunliffe this morning still denying the comments of his own immigration spokespersoon. On ZB with Rachel Smalley he said:

I mean he has frankly made up the suggestion that we would decrease the Samoan or Pacific quotas or cut back on family reunification. At no stage have we said we would do any of that and frankly it’s not our policy.

The Stuff article makes it very clear they were talking family reunifications.

It seems the only category they’re willing to now concede they may change is investor migrants. We have only a few dozen of those a year. You could scrap the category entirely and impact migration by around 0.5% only.

Brett Hudson

queenstfarmer

Cunliffe on The Nation last weekend was all over the place on immigration.

And what hypocrisy, he “challenged” John Key to state what he thought was an acceptable number of immigrants, but said that Labour will not be giving a number itself – just that it should be “reasonable” and “managed”. Of course, Cunliffe had already given a number but is now lies that he hadn’t, while Key has said that he is comfortable with current immigration.

thedavincimode

burt

Never forget Clark’s arrogant approach to government Labour party style…. The business of government is whatever government define it to be. IE: We make it up as we go along to deliver on our own private agenda to ourselves.

hj

The HRC influence re Dr Gregs Clydesdales discussion paper on PI immigration and (now) kow-towing of political parties shows that we can’t protect our environment and standard of living because we have a fundamentally (politically correct) position that the other must never be seen in a bad light.
John Key has circled the wagons around property investors. He must win at any cost.

EAD

Burt – of course that is true and I don’t dispute that. We are a comparatively wealthy country with wide open spaces. I’d say people from 90% of the world’s countries would come here if they could regardless of who is in power. Sh*t, would any sensible person want to live in a poor, authoritarian dump if they had the choice?

The problem and fear that people have is, and is the reality which people like DPF ignore, is that by becoming multicultural, we create the same environment which these people were fleeing and destroy what makes us unique. I don’t want to lose that but if we continue on like this we will.

That debate on our very existence is the debate that needs to be had, not cheap political outscoring which to be frank is of little consequence to our future.

hj

The wide open spaces argument needs qualification. Space on it’s own isn’t enough; infrastructure and an economy are needed. There is an idea being promulgated that if we have a free market people will just arrive and start doing exceptional things. In the meantime the construction/people servicing sector does well.

s.russell

Labour could get away with this kind of stuff in the past because no-one (except political junkies) was paying attention. But the proximity of an election focuses people’s minds, making Labour’s blunders ever more damaging.

burt

EAD

So Labour’s solution to NZ becoming more desirable to live in under a National government is to lock the gates and start their steady progress toward recession like they have done every single time they have been in office for the last 50 years ?

Paulus

burt

EAD

The economy will collapse under Labour because their policies of redistribution, intervention and command and control stuff shit up. It’s called social engineering – and it doesn’t work. Immigration is red herring that normally only Winston gets a free pass for using to his own advantage whipping up hysteria – what made Cunliffe think he could behave like Winston ?

burt

The bottom line is – Immigration is only an issue because we have unsustainable social polices due to the misguided belief that socialism works when it’s never worked anywhere. Extra people just make it fail faster – it’s always going to fail – it’s socialism – that’s what it does – FAIL.

davidp

Anonymouse>Combine this with the ” we will abolish coat-tailing – but will need the coat-tailers votes to do it”, says to me that everything is on the hoof at the moment,

Coat-tailing wasn’t an issue at the 2011 election… there were no coat-tailors. I doubt if ACT or Dunne are going to bring in a second MP on the basis of their expected electorate wins. Labour want to change the law with some urgency. So why doesn’t National agree with them, and propose changing the law before the election? Labour could either support it and therefore keep Harre out of parliament. Or change their mind again, oppose it, and look like hopeless hypocrites they are.

Sir Cullen's Sidekick

To the rich pricks who post here ridiculing Cunliffe, here are some facts of life according to Messiah:

1. I still have time
2. I am still learning
3. People are starting to like me
4. The more they know me, the better they like me
5. The polls are moving in the right direction
6. We are able to magically build 9 houses in a day (10,000 houses in 3 years) and none of the idiots in MSM have questioned us how that is physically possible
7. We will abolish coat tailing but at the same time use the coat tail to get into power
8. We will reduce immigration by doing nothing. How you may ask? Nobody will ever come here when I am in power
9. People trust me, because I have my own trust…take that uncle Key
10. Everybody loves me including my own caucus…just me in my own caucus

Vote for me because I am the only one capable of making policies on the spot.

burt

EAD

Burt 10.47

I agree 100% with your above post.

Despite what politicians would have us believe, people around the world are essentially the same in that they want what is best for their family. Under a socialist, redistributive (yes this includes the nats) government, they will play divide and rule, playing racial groups off against each other in order that their group gets more loot by insisting we are mere sums of a racial group rather than autonomous individuals. This has happened time and time again until the country ends up ruled by an iron fist due to the resentment caused and inevitable social chaos.

It doesn’t happen over night, but history repeats again and again. A socialist utopia cannot be built despite each new idiot that comes along saying “this time is different”………it never is

tvb

Cunliffe was once immigration Minister. I cannot believe he would engage on dog whistle politics on such a complex issue. He has given John Key a free pass which Key is making full use of around the pacific

OneTrack

Sir Cullen's Sidekick

tvb (4,065 comments) says:
June 5th, 2014 at 11:30 am
Cunliffe was once immigration Minister. I cannot believe he would engage on dog whistle politics on such a complex issue. He has given John Key a free pass which Key is making full use of around the pacific

But the sad side of the story is Pasifika people still innocently trust Labour thinking Labour is the only party that will help them….exactly like the Maori people think….

ross411

queenstfarmer (721 comments) says:
June 5th, 2014 at 9:22 am
Cunliffe on The Nation last weekend was all over the place on immigration.

I’m surprised you could tell.

I made the mistake of watching The Nation once right after he became leader. It was the limpest interview I’ve seen in a long time (excepting John Campbell with his friend Len Brown and that softball PR event). Cunliffe just pedalled out smarmy double speak and meaningless canned lines, you couldn’t tell if he was in any place let alone all over the place.

Then on the same show they had John Key. The presenter was practically harassing him and not letting him finish what he was saying. It was perplexing given the presenter had let Cunliffe repeat his canned lines over and over.

ross411

The revised immigration cap will now result in – is it three or four – houses being stolen from under the noses of hard-working Kiwi families?

edit: Talk about the incredible shrinking policy – lots of noise and brouhaha and it eventually just fizzles out into nothing as the heat comes on.

I want someone with video editing skills to gather all the news articles and videos, and put a time lapse of the hot air being let out of the policy.

i.e. Video of announcement against immigration (with subtitles highlighting initial claims with involved numbers). Video/screenshot of subsequent announcements (with more subtitles and decreasing numbers). No smarmy political snark, just letting the strangeness of it all speak for itself.